


settling entropy

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Disassociation, Self-Destructive, Self-Indulgent, Self-Loathing, unwarranted scientific facts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25175311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: a dramatization of what happened in the author's life on february 12, 2020
Relationships: You/Them - Relationship
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous





	settling entropy

You’re at the laboratory. It’s a Wednesday night and you had prematurely cleaned your hands with 70% ethanol because you had just disposed of the blue nitrile gloves and you don’t want your skin to shine with the accumulated sweat, nor do you want it to smell like salty exocrine secretions. You can’t be bothered to remember the hormone that causes it, but you really should. There’s an Anatomy exam tomorrow on the Endocrine System and the Sense Organs, the second of an accursed set of five.

The halogen-fueled lights flood the empty lab, or rather labs. The room hums with electricity, electrons jump from one metal ion to the other, oxidizing and reducing, to provide the light and to power the obscene number of fridges and centrifuges and incubators and who knows what else? There are ten labs alone on this floor, more or less continuous with each other. The borders of where each lab starts and ends are weak, unlike the subjects they research. Yes, despite the unity of it all, the graduate students from each lab rarely interact with each other, and even less with you. But their presence is all too blatant.

Sometimes you hear raucous laughter from Fruit Fly Lab #2 (there are two in total on this floor, and this is the only one you have any real respect for). The heavy doors close with a slam and remain close unless needed, but they can be propped open for convenience, but no wants to be the one to do it and so during the busy hours, sometimes you hear an emphatic curse as the door close on ragged closed-toe shoes. Newly formed ice in the ice machine buries the old ones, filling the space that someone had took before. Now, at this unholy hour – you don’t dare to look at the time – you’re truly alone and the only sound is that dreadful humming.

Of course, there was always the option of exposing this dead air to your carefully curated playlist, but you wouldn’t dare to disturb the quiet sanctity, and the fact that you caught the night-time janitor wandering in the hall, who probably will not appreciate your music. All you have is your distorted reflection in the hood’s plexiglass covering and a month’s worth of solidifying agar plates.

The hood is full of them. Air, scented with industrialized chemicals, blow into your nostrils and – what were they called? – _chemoreceptors_ in the mucosa interpret that as smell. The blowing air dislodges curls from your hastily brushed hair and you have to tuck them back in. Each agar plate is carefully labeled with the name, date, type, and initialed (of the creator). You are not the creator, but you have been last-minute charged with the duty of pouring the melted agar into those plates, wait for them to solidify, and package them into neat columns to place in the rapidly cluttering fridge.

You suppose it could be worse, but you _know_ that it could be better. It could’ve been different. At least you have a dream, even if that dream wasn’t yours – but who are you to ruin someone else’s dream?

Oxytocin and antidiuretic hormone are made by the hypothalamus but stored in the posterior pituitary. The anterior pituitary has STH, TSH, ACTH, FSH, LH. Your mind pauses. Is the luteinizing hormone really in the anterior pituitary, or is it produced by the ovaries in the corpus luteum? You decide it is the latter but when you go back into your notes, you find that it is actually produced by the anterior pituitary. _God damn it. God damn it all._

You’re definitely failing this exam. What a shame. You barely crossed the pass line of the first one. Last semester, you barely got an A and this semester, well, you think you will be lucky if you manage to get a B+. Peer pressure is a dangerous thing; all the people you call a friend want to work with the human body and you didn’t want to be alone, even though you are alone all time. In the midst of echoing laughter, you are silent.

One of the doors opens, and it makes you jump. You take in a sharp breath and you spare a glance at the direction where your tympanum had picked up the sound. It’s Them, the graduate student from Fruit Fly Lab #2. There were others in that lab, but you like this one the most, out of everyone else, really. It’s pathetic. They smile in your direction, and you think you pick up a twinkle in their eyes, and you _think_ something is there.

Hope is a dangerous thing, and you are playing a dangerous game.

“You didn’t get scared this time?”

Their hair is scandalously down; their hands are stuffed in their denim pockets. A backpack is slung over their shoulder, resting on a fleece jacket hiding thinner flannel. The weather’s getting warm, but the lab is always so cold.

You shake off unwarranted trepidation. It isn’t from their entrance. “The door alerted me first. _That_ scared me. Why are you here, anyway? Forgot something?”

“Indeed I did.” They dangle a pair of keys. “These. Can’t enter my house without them. I saw that your lab’s lights were still on, I just thought I would drop in to say hello and ask why are you still here? Don’t you have an Anatomy test at eight in the morning?”

“Well, hello, and I do.” You brandish your printed notes. The corners are bent from you aggressively stuffing into your backpack. There’s always someplace to go, somewhere to be. “Thank you for the reminder, but unfortunately,” you gesture at the agar plates, “I have these keeping me up.”

They give you an easy smile. “At least it’s better than getting sunburnt while collecting ants in Manhattan.”

It is. The taxonomic classification of urban ants recedes into your memory, but the experience of freedom never fades. You remember laughing in ecstasy on one, humid and rainy night. You remember looking at your reflection the puddle cradled by asphalt, thinking to yourself _it’s going to be okay_ and believing it too. You remember climbing the steps to your quaint apartment uptown and settling into the soft sheets of your bed. Sure, you had to wake up early that morning and drag yourself to a dingy street, counting and identifying ants, but God, did you feel _free._

Nothing ever came close to that night. You’re still trying to recreate that feeling.

A silence passes.

Still. That’s the key word. There’s a chance that this might work out, but there is a chance that it won’t. Chances, chances, chances. You never know until you try, but is it worth the heartbreak? You convince yourself that you don’t need to act like another person around Them. Is this the same feeling? They are a good listener. Means well. Appreciates art. You wonder what those long fingers can do besides play the guitar.

Before your brain decides, your heart forces your larynx to move. You open your mouth, take a half-step closer, taking a chance but before you finish, They take a chance.

“Do you want a ride home?” There’s a slight catch in their voice, like they had swallowed honey but it went down the wrong pipe. “The train can be dangerous.”

You hesitate. You know what you to want to say. They have given their chance to you. Instead, you exercise common courtesy, but you don’t try and hide the hope. “Are you sure? I live quite far from you.”

“Yes.” They sound more assured. “I don’t mind.” They glance at the plates. “I think they’re solid now. I can help you –”

Both of you make a move, Them trying to help, you extending politeness because They shouldn’t really be here because they’re proctoring that same exam that you have tomorrow and don’t you feel tired?

Your fingers brush against each other – two tangents crossing – and neither of you move.

“You radiate warmth,” they say, softly.

“Thank you,” you choke out.

You never quite realized the somewhat staggering height difference until now. They have a few inches on you.

You’re not sure who made the first move, but now your fingers are tangled into each other and the space between you has closed.

Neither of you speak. It’s all body movements as the both of you stumble into an empty office.

Their hands find purchase on your jacket and it slides off easily. You shiver as soon as your bare skin touches the air-conditioned temperature. They break the kiss and ask if you’re all right and you give Them a small smile and say “of course.” Your hands take off their layers (and there’s so many) and they grab at the hem of their shirt and you look up at them for approval and they nod.

At some point, small acts turn into grand gestures. Now, you are chest-to-chest. They trail a kiss down your body, and their hands trail up your back. It sends a thrill that reverberates in your chest cavity, through the chambers of your heart. The epinephrine starts to kick in and your stomach tightens and you can faintly feel heat pooling into your abdomen. It’s visceral. You want to cry. You’ve never felt so alive.

You stay like that with Them for a little while. Both your lips are red and swollen and they shine and their fingers wander downwards -

The alarm rings.

You blink once and you’re alone again, still staring at the list of hormones. You catch a distorted glimpse of yourself in one of the beakers and you start screaming. Something breaks. Something trickles in your hand. Something is red on the floor

You start screaming.

The alarm keeps ringing, until it eventually fades away, after five minutes to be exact.

You can see now. Numbly, you steal a broom from another lab and sweep the broken glass into its proper disposal bin. The dishes full of media have solidified, and you stack them neatly on top of each other, securing them all with a plastic bow and precariously stacking them upon one of the fridge’s rack.

Everything is clean. It’s like you weren’t even there. If and when your supervisor asks where that beaker went, you know that you will smile easily, turn your head away slightly, and say with a bit of a laugh: “Oh, you know me. I accidentally dropped it while organizing the lab.”

You wash your hands before leaving, reassembling yourself for the train ride home. It’s going to be a long night and you cannot afford to break again.

* * *

You hand in your test with grim acceptance. They smile at you and assure you that you did a good job, but it’s all pointless politeness. You smile back, an empty one, and say that you will see them later.

Something inside you closes. All you can feel is want, want, and _want._ It disgusts you.


End file.
